But exalted and serene as was His Highness, he was caught as helplessly in the toils of the Princess Aly as any lovesick boy; and within a week of making his first bow had her installed in his Castle of Oberstein, after satisfying the most clamorous of her creditors with borrowed money. That there might be no question of obligation, the Princess repaid him with the most lavish promises to redeem his heavily mortgaged estate with the millions she was daily expecting from Persia, and to use her great influence with Tsar and Sultan to support his claim to the Schleswig and Holstein duchies. And that he might be in no doubt as to her ability to discharge these promises, she showed him letters, addressed to her in the friendliest of terms by these august personages.

Each day in the presence of this most alluring of princesses forged new fetters for the susceptible Duke, until one day she announced to him, with tears streaming down her pretty cheeks, that she had received a letter recalling her to Persia—to be married. The crucial hour had arrived. The Duke, reduced to despair, begs her to accept his own exalted hand in marriage, vowing that, if she refuses, he will "shut himself up in a cloister"; and is only restored to a measure of sanity when she promises to consider his offer.

When Hornstein, the Duke's ambassador to Vienna, appears on the scene, full of suspicion and doubts, she makes an equally easy conquest of him. She announces to his gratified ears her wish to become a Catholic; flatters him by begging